


A Long, Dark Night

by Preelikeswriting



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Gen, Not Slash, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Season/Series 01, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Thoughts, good brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 04:11:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14968832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Preelikeswriting/pseuds/Preelikeswriting
Summary: Tommy, after a bad night, participates in some risky behavior. Arthur comes to deliver some brotherly wisdom.





	A Long, Dark Night

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something while I'm working on the second part of TtG...

Tommy took a long drag, his legs dangling loosely from his open window. He hadn’t done this since he was a teenager, since before France.   
  
His rational mind warned him of assassination. A car, whipping around the corner, two shots; the end at last of Tommy Shelby. However, at that moment, his rational mind was buried deep down under the smog of Opium smoke.   
  
So maybe he was making himself an easy target.   
  
So maybe he didn’t really care.   
  
His dreams had been full of tunnels. As always. Awful, damp, cold, ugly things. Stifling his breathing, his breath catching in his throat, choking him, and bringing him back to the moment the walls had given way and buried him alive. It was in that moment, where his lungs struggled to draw in anything but dirt, that he knew there would be no Catholic burial for him. He wanted to burn, to have it done the old way. No more mud for Tommy Shelby.   
  
As he tore himself out of his dreams his mind woke up. His body, however, remained trapped in the mud for precious terrible secondsminuteshours… he didn’t know. All he knew was that when he woke up he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move, but there were things moving around him. Things in the dark. And at that moment Tommy Shelby decided that he’d died and gone to hell. He’d died and gone to hell and it was terrifying.   
  
So maybe, the moment the strange spell had released his bones, when the shadows moving out of the corner of his eyes vanished, he’d gone flailing to his bedside table where he kept his stash of opium. Opium he’d sworn to get himself off, but maybe hadn’t been quite strong enough to throw away. He tried to tell himself it was just a one-time thing. That this was only to get him through the night. But, he knew.   
  
He’d need it again.   
  
Because that was his life now wasn’t it? Screaming himself awake, choking on dirt hundreds of miles away. He’d started using because he couldn’t stand the look on their faces when he came down in the morning. Knowing the things they’d heard through the too-thin walls. But now he feared their reactions if they realized what he’d lowered himself too. A junkie. They wouldn’t say anything, Shelby’s weren’t good at that, but they would change how they looked at him. They would change the things they thought they could say around him. And that couldn’t happen. Not now. After France, Tommy needed to know everything, needed to be in control. If he wasn’t... he might as well be drowning in the mud.   
  
So he sat on the sill, sagging forward ever so slightly, tempting the universe- no, God, a God he desperately wanted to believe in, but- just couldn’t. Tempting God to send a gust of wind to send Tommy Shelby below where he belonged.   
  
That’s when the door opened. Arthur froze for a moment as his eyes fell on Tommy’s empty bed. Blankets were thrown off, sheets in disarray. Then for a brief moment, he could breathe again as his eyes fell on his little brothers back. But then, his mind caught up with eyes and his stomach dropped.   
  
Arthur moved forward slowly, almost afraid of making a sound. “Tommy? What are you doing?”   
  
“Arthur?” His voice came out slightly slurred, and Arthur’s heart pitched as Tommy swayed on his perch. “What are you doing here? Everything alright?”   
  
“I feel like I’m the one who should be asking that.” Arthur frowned, taking another step forward. “You good?”   
  
“Yep,” Tommy answered in the same clipped way he always answered that question. And Arthur almost could have believed him if not for the glazed look in his little brother’s eyes.   
  
“Tommy, have you taken something?” The words came out strangled and his heart broke as Tommy frowned tightly and pointedly looked away. “Okay,” Arthur said quietly like he’d seen Tommy do with his horses when he thought no one was watching. “Okay, then. Tommy, do me a favor and come back inside. I don’t think you should be sitting there right now.”   
  
“I’m fine, Arthur.”   
  
“No, you’re not!” Arthur barked, immediately regretting his tone. “That’s not- That’s- Tommy, please come inside. You need to sleep.”   
  
Tommy let out a choked laugh. “No.”   
  
“Tom-“   
  
“I’m not a child Arthur!” he spat towards his brother, and with that Tommy lost his balance. His eyes widened momentarily, almost like he couldn’t imagine that he was actually going to fall. Arthur lunged forward and snagged his little brother's jacket and pulled as hard as he could.   
  
Tommy spilled backward onto him, lying still, his breathing labored. “Tommy?” Arthur scrambled out from under him, kneeling at his brother's side. “Tommy can you hear me?!”   
  
Tommy’s hand snaked up and wrapped itself around Arthur’s wrist. “I’m okay, I’m okay Arthur.” Tommy’s mouth flapped uselessly, his eyes listless and wandering as his brain tried to order the series of events that had befallen it.   
  
“Jesus Tom, what were you thinking?” Arthur said, his eyes dropped to the floor. His breathing almost as ragged as his brother’s as he clutched Tommy’s offered wrist. “You could have-” Arthur swallowed the last words not even wanting to give voice to his worst fears. Instead, he clutched Tommy’s wrist tighter, pressing it to his lips. “You can’t do that Tom, you just can’t. Me, John, Ada, Polly- we can’t do this without you. Finn fucking idolizes you, you idiot. What happens if he finds your brains spread out all over the cobblestones? Eh? Tommy, you can’t check out like that on us. Not you.”

  
Thomas nodded shakily. “Arthur I- I wasn’t trying to-”   
  
“-And that’s almost worse isn’t it!” Arthur locked eyes with his little brother, taking in the sight of the purple bags below them, almost the color they'd been when Tommy would say something dad didn’t like. “Tom, I know you- I get that may not have been on your mind when you climbed out there. But, you have to realize you still got high and climbed out a window. I need you to be smarter than that.” Arthur winced. “I know it isn’t right of me to try and just force you to get better Tommy, but the truth is, I’m not sure how much longer I’m gonna be around. There are days when it feels like my heads going the same way as Danny’s, and I need to know there’s someone here looking out for everyone.”   
  
Arthur could feel Tommy’s breathing returning to normal, but his voice still sounded choked as he spoke. “Why are you here? Why’d you come in?”   
  
“I... I had- I couldn’t sleep,” He finally answered.   
  
“Was it about France?”   
  
“In a way.” Tommy didn’t push it, but Arthur felt an overwhelming urge to explain himself. “I would have these dreams over there- and I thought they’d stop. Now that we’re home, now that we’re back in Birmingham. But they haven’t. And every time I go to sleep I see you dead. You, and John, and Finn, Ada, Polly- you name it. And if I want even a chance of seeing sleep again, I have to check. Check to make sure you’re all alright. That’s what I was doing tonight.” he paused before adding awkwardly, “It never really occurred to me what to do if one of you was awake when I came by.”   
  
Tommy just lay there for a moment. Some of the fog had faded now, adrenaline pushing him up through it, but most of it remained to make his head feel soft and week. “Arthur…”   
  
“Yeah, Tommy?”   
  
Thomas’s voice came out impossibly small as he spoke, far from the cold fierce man who’d returned from war a few months back. “Why won’t it stop? In my head- why won’t the digging stop.”   
  
Arthur’s mouth flapped uselessly and pulled his brother up so he was clutching him more securely. “I don’t know Tommy, I don’t know.”   
  
Tommy woke up the next morning in his own bed, sheets pulled over him in a way that revealed someone else had done it for him. Arthur was asleep beside him sitting upright against Tommy’s nightstand, neck lolled awkwardly to the side in a manner that would hurt once his brother woke up.   
  
He climbed out of bed slowly as not to wake Arthur, and came around the other side of the stand, noticing his pipe and opium lying out in the open. Tommy picked them up, rolling them across his hands when a voice interrupted- “I nearly threw them away.” Arthur’s eyes were open now, but his brother made no move to stand. “But I realized it wasn’t my place. I- I don’t approve of it, not because I don’t think it helps or that I wouldn't do the same in your position, God knows I would, but because I hate to think about what they could do to you.”   
  
“I’m not chucking it,” Tommy responded.   
  
Arthur frowned, “I knew you wouldn’t. Just- just be carefully Tommy. Yeah?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
Tommy kept hold of the drugs long after Arthur left the room, just rolling them back and forth across his cold fingers. Not today, but someday. Someday he could let it go.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This was my first time dipping my toes into the Peaky Blinders sandbox and I had a lot of fun with this. I kinda edited this quickly, so if you see any spelling/grammar I missed feel free to comment and I'll go back through and fix it.


End file.
